Various containers are currently available for shipping and storing chairs and seats for vehicles such as automobiles, buses, and airplanes. These containers are designed to hold either a single seating unit or multiple units. Typically, multiple seating units are arranged with one unit upright and the other unit inverted. The two seating units are nested facing each other, with the top (or seat back) of each unit adjacent the base of the other unit.
An L-shaped shipping container for a single chair or other article of furniture is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,871,061. A shipping container designed to accommodate a pair of chairs arranged in the nested configuration described above is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,170,297. These patents note a number of disadvantages of the prior art, including the amount of time and manual labor involved in assembling and sealing containers for shipment and in unpacking and disassembling the containers after receipt, the amount of excess paperboard used in forming and reinforcing containers, the failure of containers to adequately protect the contents, and the amount of excess space taken up by containers. An additional disadvantage that is not mentioned in or solved by these patents is the time and costs involved in disposing of the used container materials, either as garbage or by recycling.
It would be desirable, therefore, to provide a reusable container for shipping seating units that overcomes the aforementioned and other disadvantages.